Here's a little nugget buried in an article about developments in the torture investigations:
Sources told The Washington Post earlier this year that an earlier draft of the investigators' (Justice Department ethics) report recommended disciplinary referrals to local bar associations for two of the men: Yoo, now a law professor in California, and Bybee, now a federal appeals court judge based in Nevada. The report requires the approval of new Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., and findings could be released as early as this summer, according to two sources familiar with the process.
This is the report out of the Office of Professional Responsibility, basically completed in draft form and held for release, waiting for some of the information associated with it to become declassified. Calling for disciplinary referrals is nice, but the OPR report could also be used as a jumping-off point for prosecution or further investigation into ethical conduct, particularly of Bybee, who sits on the federal bench. This is why BushCo officials and their landmines at Justice are scrambling to soften the report.
Former Bush administration officials are lobbying behind the scenes to push Justice Department leaders to water down an ethics report criticizing lawyers who blessed harsh detainee interrogation tactics, according to two sources familiar with the efforts.
In recent days, attorneys for the subjects of the ethics probe have encouraged senior Bush administration appointees to write and phone Justice Department officials, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the process is not complete.
These "torture lobbyists" include past senior Bush DoJ officials, but I'll bet they also include the burrowed Bush officials at Justice, designated to protect the interests of the previous Administration. Eric Holder already last month dispatched the Bush-era head of the Office of Professional Repsonsibility, where this investigation originated, and replaced him with Mary Patrice Brown, who looks to be a pretty tough character. Ultimately, though, Holder must sign off on the report.
And here's the latest, as Devlin Barrett of the AP gets a sneak peek at the report, showing that the professional sanctions may remain intact, but that's as far as it goes:
Bush administration lawyers who approved harsh interrogation techniques of terror suspects should not face criminal charges, Justice Department investigators say in a draft report that recommends two of the three attorneys face possible professional sanctions [...]
Officials conducting the internal Justice Department inquiry into the lawyers who wrote those memos have recommended referring two of the three lawyers — John Yoo and Jay Bybee — to state bar associations for possible disciplinary action, according to a person familiar with the inquiry. The person, who spoke on condition of anonymity, was not authorized to discuss the inquiry.
The person noted that the investigative report was still in draft form and subject to revisions. Attorney General Eric Holder also may make his own determination about what steps to take once the report has been finalized.
This is clearly a trial balloon, designed to gauge reaction throughout the civil liberties community and the broader Democratic constituency. We've seen this movie enough with the Obama Administration to recignize it. They leak out some possible outcome to see how it plays. This would be the desirable response.
Vincent Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, called the decision not to seek criminal charges "inconceivable, given all that we know about the twisted logic of these memos."
Warren argued the only reason for such a decision "is to provide political cover for people inside the Obama White House so they don't have to pursue what needs to be done."
Offering disciplinary sanctions at state bar associations isn't nothing, but hardly approaches full accountability. There needs to be a very loud reaction to this. First and foremost, Congress needs to open their own hearings into the conduct of officials like Jay Bybee, who remain in a lifetime appointment on the federal bench.